Empty Heart
by FieryPen37
Summary: Rumplestiltskin contemplates an empty house.


Empty Heart

_A/N: In anticipation of the new season coming out soon, I give you the product of no sleep plus Season 1 reruns. Huge fan of the Rumpelstilstkin/Belle ship._

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He watched the spinning wheel turn, gently creaking on an ill-oiled axel. The noise was comforting, like the croon of a mother to her child. If he closed his eyes, he could just as easily be in his hut in the village, spinning thread from the coarse, oily wool of his sheep. Baelfire would be sweeping or playing or carving—the boy lined their sills with the fruits of his labors: a cat, a knight, even a rather sinuous looking dragon. When he was a cripple and a coward, shunned and loathed.

Rumplestiltskin opened his eyes and saw the long table gleaming with polish, bathed in the blinding light pouring in from the windows. Light and air, breath and life, sunshine on sheets of shining dark brown hair . . .

Rumplestiltskin grimaced. While still shunned and loathed, the sweet red mistress of power nursed his hurts and smoothed balm on the string of his life's ignominies. She was curiously silent now, the fickle woman. His predecessor, Zoso, as he lay choking on his own blood, had said magic came with a price. Well, Rumplestiltskin had paid it again and again and _again_. Another measured turn of the spinning wheel turned the coarse straw into a fine thread of gold, spooling into a gleaming nest between the butter soft leather of his boots.

Why hadn't she just _left_? Left him to his power and his empty house. No, instead she came back, while he watched in disbelief from his tower window. She came _back,_ prancing into his house after she'd wormed her way into his soul. She came back with her sweet smile and her heart in her eyes and a kiss . . .

'_It's working!' _she on her breath and the breath-stealing pleasure of her lips on his, he had dumbly replied, _'What is?'_ It had all been a lie, all of it. Just a ploy from the Queen to weaken him! Never mind the gut-wrenching pain of her tears, nor her cruel words that sank into him like basilisk venom. She'd called him a coward, like everyone else, and then drove the metaphorical dagger deeper. She would never seek the true one, inscribed with his name and sealed in blood. She was much too _good_ for that.

_All you'll be left with is an empty heart and a chipped cup._

The doors flew open and his traitorous heart leaped with cruel hope—only to have them dashed when a prowling black-clad figure strolled into his house like she owned the place.

"Flimsy locks," she taunted, tittering breezily, gesturing with an elegant unfurling of her hand. She flashed a grin with her perfect teeth, as false as a minstrel's song. A deep loathing rose in him, mirrored only by his intense jealousy. While inwardly as warped and fearsome as himself, Regina wore her beauty with ease and grace. One look at _him_ had the villagers running. She nattered on about some proposed deal and he turned her down. Regina paused from preparing her tea to roll her dark cat-eyes at him.

"Are you angry with me?" she drawled, "what is it this time?"

"Your little deception failed," he enunciated the words with shivering relish, "you'll never be more powerful than me." Beneath the whimsy of caprice and the black rage, lurked the simple accent of his village. Even after all these, he couldn't shake it.

"You can keep trying, dearie. But you're never going to beat me." _Never_! Instead of dismay, the Queen affected a mock expression of contrition.

"Is this about that girl I met on the road?" she simpered. Rumplestiltskin glanced away, anger rising quick and hot. So she _had_ met the Queen on the road! He turned his spindle with almost obsessive care, watching the heap of gold grow. Regina snickered.

"What was her name? Margie? Verna?"

"Belle."

Gods, it hurt to say her name! He dealt and hoarded names. They held a power even Regina couldn't master. Hers held power over him; a power could pull his strings like one of Gepetto's puppets. Regina could sense it, like blood to a shark. Her slanting dark look was pregnant with meaning. Her silken black hair hung over her shoulder, as thick as a cathedral bell's rope. A faint flick of her chin sent it swinging over her shoulder. Her voice was crisp and dry as she finished preparing her tea.

"Well, you can rest assured I had nothing to do with that tragedy."

Rumplestiltskin froze, as if struck by a curse. It was a curse, a black curse that made fear creep into his heart like tendrils of an evil vine. Tragedy? _Tragedy? _ Curse her! She was baiting him, drawing him out with insubstantial crumbs of information. He abandoned his spinning wheel and stalked toward her, dragging a tea spoon from her mouth in mock innocence. He would take the bait, and the hook too if that's what it took!

"What. Tragedy?" he demanded, enunciating the words carefully. Her perfectly shaped brows rose.

"You don't _know_?" she said, scandalized, "Well, after she got home . . . her fiancé had gone missing." Some of the tension left him. Was that all? That fool Gaston had been foolish enough to confront him on his own doorstep. A simple rose was a kind fate for him. She hadn't been fond of him anyway, Rumplestiltskin thought with a touch of possession. But the Queen continued, her voice husky and slithering, like a snake sinuous in the grass, dancing around the table.

"And after her stay here, and her-" a delicate pause, "_association_ with you, no one would want her, of course." Regina paused, smiling her false smile, eyes dark and hard like black diamonds.

"Her father shunned her, cut her off, shut her out."

His mind and heart raced in tandem, with joy and hope. He could fix it! He could! She would come _back_! Rumplestiltskin didn't care if he sounded like the lovesick sot he was; the words rushed passed his lips and hung in the air, "So she needs a h—home." Regina gasped a quick, careless laugh. The next words shattered that fantasy with a mallet, and the glittering shards pierced his soft, fragile being.

"He was cruel to her. He locked her in a tower and sent in clerics to cleanse her soul with _scourges_ and _flame_." He couldn't breathe. He _hurt_ her? Rumplestiltskin gathered his rage and power around him, ready to raze that fat fool's kingdom to the ground, tear down his palace brick by brick and gather his sweet Belle home. She would come home and he would make her _better_ . . .

"After a while she threw herself off the tower. She _died_." His lips quivered around a snarl. No, not Belle, no, not Belle, Belle, Belle, Belle . . .

"You're lying," he said. His tongue felt thick and ungainly. It couldn't be true. No. He would make her _better_ . . .

"Am I?" she challenged, her eyes fierce and direct. The doors flew open and banged against the wall.

"We're done," he rasped. Regina heaved a sigh and flounced out, leaving behind the scent of tart apple blossoms and cinnamon. It was only when he set the chipped tea cup that he let the pain in.

For a creature with an empty heart, he certainly knew when it was broken.

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A/N: After a while the word 'Rumplestiltskin' begins to look really stupid. What did we think?


End file.
